Does the Marvel Cinematic Universe need the X-Men?

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been quite an achievement in film, a series of movies that set up an interconnected universe. From Iron Man to Ant-Man, the films all enriched, expanded, and told some fun stories.

Unfortunately, due to legal reasons, two major teams from the Marvel Comics Universe can't be a part of the MCU: The Fantastic Four and the X-Men. The film rights to those characters and their corners of the Marvel Universe belong to Fox.

The failure of the latest film outing of the Fantastic Four has led to fans calling for Fox to give the rights to the Fantastic Four back to Marvel. It has also come to light that Sony, the holders to the film rights to Spider-Man, have made a deal with Marvel Studios to bring Spider-Man into the MCU.

With this, I asked myself, what about the X-Men? Would Marvel and Fox do a deal to have the X-Men join the MCU? They did something like that for Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver to appear in Avengers: Age of Ultron. As part of the deal, the MCU version of Wanda and Pietro Maximoff were revamped to be humans that were empowered by experimentation instead of being born with their powers.

But here's the thing, does the MCU NEED the X-Men? Does their absence take away from the MCU? Would bringing them in add anything special to the MCU?

After thinking about it, my opinion is simply this: It would be nice to have them from a Marvel fan perspective, but maybe the MCU will be just fine without them.

Think about it, the MCU has done well without the X-Men so far. And since Marvel Studios can't use them or the Fantastic Four, it's forced them to dig deeper into Marvel's massive library of characters for characters they could. It's what inspired them to make films with Ant-Man and Guardians, and even the Inhumans. Critically and financially, the MCU films have done well with nary a mutant in sight. The Avengers has become the highest-grossing superhero movie ever, beating out the first Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man film, and even The Dark Knight Rises! In 19 days, 19 DAYS, it not only made back its budget, but also the budget for every other MCU film to that point. And all without a mutant in sight.

Not to mention there's another reason why the MCU really doesn't need the X-Men that badly: The Inhumans. In the comics, the Inhumans were a hidden race, an offshoot of humanity created by alien experimentation on humanity's ancestors. These test subjects would live in seclusion from the rest of humanity, creating an advanced technological society with a rigid caste system, when the rest of humanity was emerging from the caves. When a young Inhuman would come of age, they would be exposed to a gas called Terrigen Mist, which would grant them superhuman abilities.

The Infinity storyline revealed that there were secret tribes of Inhumans that interbred with humanity, creating human descendants with dormant Inhuman genes, which would be exposed with the Inhumanity storyline. One good thing about that storyline is it would give rise to one of my favorite Marvel characters, Kamala Khan, the latest Ms. Marvel.

In the MCU, storylines in the Agents of SHIELD series have introduced the Inhumans, and the ending of season two has hinted that we will be seeing more Inhumans. It can be assumed based on that series, that the staus quo of the Inhumans is similar to the comic, there are lots of people out there with hidden Inhuman genes, and we're going to see their Inhuman natures come to light. Not to mention, an Inhumans movie is planned to be released in 2019, which can be assumed will focus on the Inhuman Royal Family: Black Bolt, Medusa, Crystal, Karnak, Gorgon, Triton, and Lockjaw.

With this status quo, it can be assumed that Inhumans are the MCU's equivalent of mutants in a way, people born with powers who are hated and feared. As such, bringing in mutants would be...rather redundant. Mutants are people born with their powers who are hated and feared. What would make them different from the MCU Inhumans?

So, while it would be nice to see the X-Men in the MCU, they are not really needed. Let's face it, Fox will never give the rights to the Merry Mutants back to Marvel, they're too profitable. And in the MCU, they'd end up a redundancy. Any story the X-Men could tell with the themes they are associated with, mainly prejudice and fear of power abusage, could be told with the MCU's take on the Inhumans.